Posted on 09/15/2020 5:48:21 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Interested stuff, and yet Killer Whales have no taste for humans? I just don’t recall any stories of such.
I read somewhere that ‘killer whales’ is a mistranslation of ‘orca’. It is actually ‘whale-killers’. Makes sense to me...
It isn't that they have no taste for humans, it's just that humans aren't normally in the water when they are around. There are more more than a few accounts of Orcas attempting to attack humans, dating back to the early 20th Century, while they stood on the edge of the shoreline. Read about Robert Falcon Scott's 1911 expedition to Antarctica.
Dolphins have also been known to kill sharks, usually defensively. Dolphins are more agile than sharks and can usually put a whipping on a shark, especially if it’s two or more dolphins working together.
I would imagine that being warm-blooded is a factor, as well.
Based on the explanation in Wikipedia, “Orca” comes from Greek via the Ancient Romans, and I don’t think it’s a mistranslation. They are “killers of whales”, so I originally thought “killer whales” might just be a contraction. But an alternative possibility is that they look like whales, and unlike genuine whales, kill mammals, hence “whales that kill”, or “killer whales”, and I think that’s consistent with the likely Greek origin.
You guys have completely forgotten the Sea World incident of 2016 or so, never mind other times.
Doesn’t matter either way. Still killers.
Yes, and they are basically dolphins. In the same genus or order.
I didn't forget it, I just didn't mention it since it happened at Sea World and not in the wild. I wouldn't mention zoo keepers killed by lions either in an article about wild lions.
But they will take a chunk out of pretty much anything. You get what you can!
True.
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